I went to a press screening and was lucky enough to meet Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and Andrew McDonald

Rating: 9/10 (8 November 2002)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** They answered alot of questions from the floor, most of which have answered the questions on the message boards about this film.
Firstly, the film is good, in a low-budget post-apocalyptic kind of way. It's filmed entirely on a Canon LX (about Â£1500) and has a low budget (reportedly $15 million, although i get the picture alot of that was spent in post production, market research and advertising). It's not a zombie movie as such, although it does have remarkable similarities to that genre.
Basically the plot revolves around Jim, a bike courier who wakes up in a hospital several weeks after being hit by a truck, only to find he is alone. He's in a locked room, naked, and his call for help are ignored. Searching around, he finds the key to the door on the floor, as if someone locked him in and slid the key under to him (weird...) so he lets himself out and tries to find someone, anyone. There's noone around, noone at all. So, he does what anyone who's been out for weeks would do; he gorges himself on chocolate and sugary soft drinks. That over he wanders out into town.
Strangely, London is deserted. London. Yes, London. DESERTED.

Anyone who lives in london will no how weird that is. Noone ever tries to do a London deserted, it never looks the part. this time it does...
Anyway, Jim eventually stumbles into a church and finds it full of bodies. When he calls out to them, a good dozen or so leap up and charge him. Before you know it, he's on the run, and that's where it all really kicks off.
oh, and i forgot to mention the prelude with the animal rights activists letting the crazed monkeys out...
The rest of the film chronicles a story of survival, how Jim and the few survivors he meets try to make sense of the tragedy while staying alive. This is why i like the movie, the fact that it's more about the characters and how they can cope with their situation, than the situation they are in. This, i think, is why comparisons to literary classics like 'The day of the Triffids' or films like 'Dawn of the Dead' are justified; they really do stand out amongst their contemporaries since they tackle the issue of human survival head on. The Triffids had those walking plants, Dawn had the zombies, but unlike most of their kind, the zombies/plants/whatever were the problem, not the stars of the show. And, like in 28 Days later, the cast don't make stupid mistakes, they try to survive, at all costs. In this movie, look out for how Selena deals with the bite Mark gets in Jim's house. Wow...
Now, i live in Greenwich, a stones throw from where Jim lives in the film, plus my name is Jim too, so when i introduced myself to Boyle & Garland in that way, i got a laugh out of them and hit them with the following questions, which they answered fairly truthfully. so let's round up a few things.
1 Zombies. Zombie plagues always have causes relating directly to the current national phobia. In the 60/70s it was radiation, now it's chemical warfare. Let's face it, these days the concept of zombies just don't cut it with popular culture; we just can't take them seriously. many thanks to Michael Jackson for that, eh? Now, though, the world is worried about chemical warfare; anthrax, smallpox, whatever, that's a real worry. That's exactly why these 'zombies' are chemically infected, disease is a very real worry. Mind you, so is rage. Danny Boyle loved the concept of the psychological virus, everyone who lives in London has experienced rage; tube rage, road rage, bus rage, supermarket trolley rage, everything. Rage is good, and Alex Garland said he wanted to get away from the cheap staggering zombies thing, he wanted turbo charged and highly infectious crazies. I added that is was refreshing that head shots weren't the only killer, that got another laugh...
2 Deserted London. You can't stop the traffic in London, you can simply 'ask' them to wait a minute. By filming at 4am, and by getting pretty ladies to do the traffic stopping, Boyle and McDonald managed intervals of at most 2 minutes, over 4 mornings, to shoot as much footage as possible with eight digital cameras. The rest is in the editing. That's one of the reasons why there are no bodies...
3 Where are all the bodies? Well, mainly because of the reason above. The three of them also remembered Kosovo, where bodies were piled up in churchs, and decided to mimic that, hence the big body pile up church scene.
4 Product placement. Take this example; Jim wanders through the hospital, past a popular UK coffee shop chain, to a foyer where he gets soft drinks and chocolates from a vending machine. Thing is, that stuff is there, in London branding is EVERYWHERE, so why hide it?
* SPOILERS *
5 The end. Upbeat hollywood trash? Well, they did film 2 endings; in the alternate ending Jim doesn't make it off the hospital bed at the end. Would that have been better than the supposedly happy ending? Alex Garland said firstly that nearly everyone is dead so that's hardly happy. Secondly, he pointed out that after getting emotionally attached to characters for the last two hours, the audiences that saw the test screening with the downer ending HATED it. He said that audiences often think they want the downbeat arty ending but actually want the happy one.
You know what, he might be right ;)